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Some Ohio Ballot Issues Come Down to Handfuls of Votes

Voting stickers on a table at a polling place in Cleveland's Central neighborhood. (Nick Castele / ideastream)
Voting stickers on a table at a polling place in Cleveland's Central neighborhood. (Nick Castele / ideastream)

It’s perhaps not unusual that in smaller rural or suburban communities, a few dozen votes can swing an election. Voters in the Jefferson Local School District in Madison County approved an income tax by 24 votes.

In Madison Village in Lake County, about 800 people voted on a new tax levy for police – it passed by five votes. Brownhelm Township in Lorain County defeated a fire and ambulance levy by a margin so low, if three people had voted differently, the levy would have passed.

And in the Olmsted Falls school district, voters in Cuyahoga and Lorain counties rejected a school bond issue by 67 votes. Superintendent Jim Lloyd says he’s still hopeful.

“There are enough votes that are out there that if people voted provisionally," Lloyd said, "or if they sent it in the day before it was due or the day it was due, that it could put us over the top.”

There are at least 67 provisional ballots from the district. It would take all of them going in favor of the tax for the Olmsted Falls bond issue to have a chance of passing.

Nick Castele was a senior reporter covering politics and government for Ideastream Public Media. He worked as a reporter for Ideastream from 2012-2022.